Arabic mandatory at city public school

Well, I for one am an American born English speaking tax paying citizen. Taxpayers should have the right to protest something like that. I for one
would insist my children not attend the classes. I for one am not going to learn a second language to cater to the people that move here and refuse
to speak our language. Now, if I were going to travel or move to another country, I would learn their language. My grandparents were legal
immigrants from Hungary and learned to speak fluent English before they came.

Originally posted by syrinx high priest
isn't there a very high muslim population around that area ?

might explain it

No. It sounds like the school wants to look prestigious. Never mind what's best for the students.

One reason Principal Nicky Kram Rosen selected Arabic — as opposed to more common offerings, such as Spanish or French — is because it will
help the school obtain a prestigious International Baccalaureate standing.

And it is unnerving in a way that they are forced to learn a language of people who want to destroy our country...not all of them...but look at how
they are getting other countries to allow them to have their own justice system...Shari'a Law. Why must America bow to everyone who wants to make it
their own country. If theirs is so great, then stay there.

Originally posted by syrinx high priest
isn't there a very high muslim population around that area ?

might explain it

No. It sounds like the school wants to look prestigious. Never mind what's best for the students.

One reason Principal Nicky Kram Rosen selected Arabic — as opposed to more common offerings, such as Spanish or French — is because it will
help the school obtain a prestigious International Baccalaureate standing.

Learning a foreign language does not mean the student becomes brainwashed. I took many upper level Spanish courses in college in Arizona with people
who were definitely conservative-minded when it came to immigration. Also, keep in mind, Spanish, for example, is spoken in over 2 dozen countries,
not just Mexico and Cuba. So, just because a person learns Spanish does not mean they will overnight join Aztlan, paraphrase Zapata and call for the
taking of the US Southwest. I've known plenty of native Spanish speakers who are very anti-Illegal immigration.

Mandatory electives is not an oxymoron. It means, it is mandatory that you choose (i.e., "elect") some class from the list of options a
school provides (example: woodshop, mechanics, sewing, cooking, blah, blah, blah) or in the case of foreign languages, choosing one of the offered
ones. In this case, it would be awkward to say you must take Arabic but still call it an elective (though, was that even stated??).

Arabic happens to be the majority language of Islam, but that does not mean that it needs to be considered a language of brainwashing, both for the
reason I mentioned above and also because there are significant populations of the Christians in the Middle East and North Africa that speak Arabic
(and likewise, many Muslims do not speak Arabic, just as many Catholics do not speak Latin and many Jews do not speak Hebrew - though you may have to
learn it in certain ecclesiastical circles - mostly for the devout, not the laymen).

Teaching Arabic does become problematic. The "type" of Arabic known as "Classical Arabic" is the only uniform version of the language from country
to country. In other words, there is a uniform type of Arabic that almost no person speaks on a day to day basis or at all, for that matter, and there
are numerous versions (dialects) that are regional or nation-specific.

It'd be a bit like if New York English was the national language of news and TV and books, but places like Appalachia, Mississippi, Texas, Chicago
and Boston all spoke in their own form amongst themselves (basically what happens to some extent in our real world America) - but people in those
different places could barely understand eachother and only well-educated people could understand and speak the formal New York version of English.

That's how Arabic works, so I'd be interested to see how they handle such a situation in teaching Arabic to US students. I don't know how many
people are getting what I mean here by saying this, but it'd be a bit like teaching 7 year olds to talk about animals and playing in formal
Harvard-Yale legal classroom speech...basically, things that the kids would most likely be taught would more than likely be spoken in the colloquial
language of respective places (so, for example, "The fox danced by the pond. The duck drank orange juice. Etc." as said by an Egyptian or Moroccan
or Iraqi...none of them would use the same sounding phrases and more than likely, such phrases would seem awkward and pedantic in the formal, uniform
version of Arabic)

Well, there goes Spanish (Aztlan, Castro's Cuba, Chavez's Venezuela). I mean, 230 million people speak some variety of Arabic - it's probably the
most ridiculous form of "stereotype" to say that all people who speak a language are "X".

Also, usually when two people can communicate effectively, you don't have to rely on grunts and physical interaction to garner mutual understanding.
In other words, being able to communicate effectively is usually considered a "good thing", as opposed to continuous misunderstandings.

Actually, that means they are thinking of what's best for the students. An international baccalaureate would mean more opportunities for students at
those schools..."fast tracks" if you will, in certain fields. The person who wrote the article is not using "prestigious" in the sense that the
school wants to "show off", but that the program that the school is trying to get into is prestigious.

Originally posted by opal13
Well, I for one am an American born English speaking tax paying citizen. Taxpayers should have the right to protest something like that. I for one
would insist my children not attend the classes. I for one am not going to learn a second language to cater to the people that move here and refuse
to speak our language. Now, if I were going to travel or move to another country, I would learn their language. My grandparents were legal
immigrants from Hungary and learned to speak fluent English before they came.

Posted Via ATS Mobile: m.abovetopsecret.com

No offense, but I highly doubt that. I don't know how old you are or how old your grandparents were at the time they moved to the US. If I wanted to
estimate, I would guess sometime before WWII? Even so, no one's grandparents from Eastern Europe would have been studying English, let alone to the
point of attaining fluency any time before the 60s. German and Russian, yes, English, doubtful.

Even so, fluency? Wow, no one, unless they live with native speakers on a day to day basis is going to become fluent in a language outside of a
community or nation where it is spoken normally. Hungary is not that place, unless your grandparents were upperclass and attended some special school
for learning languages or English, but even then saying they were "fluent" prior to leaving is next to impossible.

I'm not calling you a liar, I'm just saying that family anecdotes tend to get warped a bit over time and what you are saying is contrary to the vast
majority of "immigrant" experiences.

My grandmother lived for two years or so in Italy with my grandfather, who was from New York and stationed there in WWII. She learned a little English
from living with him in Italy, but when she moved stateside before his tour of duty was up, she could barely communicate with my relatives in New
York. Over 5 decades she became as fluent as someone could in English, being a non-native speaker with no formal education who began learning the
language after the critical period.

The critical period is between late childhood and early adolescence (depending on scholarly research and certain individual factors). If you come to
the US when you're 6, 7, 8, or 9, you'll probably learn to speak with no accent, or a very slight one. If you come to the US when you're 8,9,10, 11
or 12, you'll probably have a slight accent your whole life and a few quirky things you say, but otherwise be fluent. If you come after 12 or 13,
it's all dependent on many factors of whether you have a slight accent and a few quirky things you say to whether you have a heavier accent and more
non-English-like structures.

Your grandparents most likely became fluent in English over the decades, but always spoke with an accent, unless they immigrated as young children
with your great grandparents (though I assume it was after they married as you imply that they immigrated together).

Also, everyone says, "I live in Arizona (or California or Florida), so I guess I should learn Spanish" but most of those people rarely attain any
level of fluency to do more than order a taco or ask where the bathroom is...and in my mind, this is hardly "catering".

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